[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA (Platt mentioned) --


> I will continue to provide clarity into our conversation
> on the subject, but this may take some time.

Your point has been made quite clearly, insofar is clarity is possible in
ontological explication.  I'm sorry if I have neglected a proper response.

> Is this illusion of existence you (Ham) talk
> about based on the Essences' or Nothingness' not being
> completely present in any one individual whether that
> individual be bird or human?  The key concept being
> "not completely present".  Thus, if essence or
> nothingness could be completely fulfilled or present
> in any one individual, then are you saying existence
> would not be an illusion?

My thesis suggests that Essence is totally absent from the "self" which is
the proprietary center of the individuals' awareness.  In existential terms,
it is a void (negate).   What I've been trying to communicate to Platt is
that the primary source of physical reality is absolute and
undifferentiated.  (I call it Essence.)  Obviously, the physical reality we
experience is finitely defined, transitional (evolutionary), and represents
"otherness" to the self.  But from the perspective of Essence, physical
existence is an illusion.

Since the self is essentially nothing, it is "not-other".  In the 16th
century, Nicholas of Cusa theorized that the "first principle" (Essence) is
the coincidence of all opposition.  He meant that dualities and
contradictions such as self/other, subject/object, being/nothingness,
finite/infinite, etc., have no commonality with Essence but are only the
"actualized" manifestation or mode of Essence.  The question for the
philosopher, then, is: How does this appearance of a differentiated reality
come about from an undifferentiated, unchanging source?

My hypothesis is that, from a finite perspective, Essence should be regarded
as "negational".  What this means is that finite existence is created by the
negation of Essence.  In my on-line thesis, I describe this "actualization"
of Essence as follows:

"Like the mountain climber who has ascended to the highest summit and for
whom further progress can only be descent, Absolute Essence is the only
entity that creates by "exclusion".  In its absolute or transcendent mode
Essence is unitary and undifferentiated, its potential for "actualizing"
contrariety being contained in its Oneness.  The creation of a
differentiated, evolutionary world by an immutable and unalterable source
suggests abnegation or "self-denial", rather than action or movement as a
modus operandi.  Because negation is primary to Essence, which itself is
primary, the cause and the source of creation are one.  From the finite
perspective, the created world can only be comprehended as a physical
modality representing what Absolute Essence itself is not; i.e.,
differentiated otherness."

I go on to say that because Essence is absolutely full or whole in itself,
it maintains its "wholeness" by denying "nothingness".  That denial is what
we would call a negation, and it creates an illusion in which sensibility
(awareness) is divided from its essence, leaving a sentient subject whose
reality is objective beingness.  This is the primary differentiation of the
illusion we call space/time existence.  In the life-experience the cognizant
self perceives "being" as a value because it is his lost essence.  With
every experience this essence is incrementally replenished as essence-value,
until (at the cessation of life) the individual has restored or "reclaimed"
all of the value lost to him at creation.

That is my creation hypothesis.  Now, you raise a number of questions that I
can't answer -- namely, the particular template or form of the "bits and
pieces" that constitute our experience of physical reality.

> Yet, I would say are not these bits and pieces really here,
> and if we start to think we see the whole picture, then our
> fallacy is only in that kind of thinking.  If, we notice that
> these bits and pieces are bits and pieces of reality
> and we realize we don't know what all of the bits and
> pieces are when completely present (thus what they are
> when we are completely aware of them), then are we not
> accepting a reality four ourselves?  I guess maybe
> what you are trying to say is that this incomplete
> reality we are aware of is called illusion.  Is that
> your point?

Yes.  The gaps in our conscious awareness are a consequence of our own
nothingness, and they cause our sensibilities to be deluded by what you
might say is an "incomplete view of ultimate reality".

> Yet, if this essence is here in negation,
> even if only in bits and pieces, then we recognize
> this incompleteness but only essence is in negation so
> shouldn't we only be aware of essence?

Essence is here and everywhere.  But we are not.  We are infinitesimal
specks in the Whole, capable only of realizing the value of Essence in a
"conditional" (finite) sense.

> The only illusion I see is the illusion one might have if they
> think they see the whole essence or nothingness.  When
> one recognizes that they are not aware of the whole
> essence or nothingness a reality is present, though
> not complete, it is present and not an illusion.

That, too, is illusory -- an illusion of the intellect, rather than of the
senses.

> This is what I meant by 'the center of the
> universe is everywhere and nowhere at the same time'.
> The bits and pieces of essence negated in the universe
> places a center or reality of the universe and where
> the universe is either being here everywhere or
> nowhere.

In Essence, "everywhere" and "nowhere" are meaningless.  There is no
"center" in absolute Essence.  The center from which we perceive objects of
being is our particular locus in the space/time universe.  Such space/time
orientation is necessary for finite awareness; but this is only the
"actualized mode" of undivided Essence.

> Please explain what you (Ham) have commented on as:
> "Since Essence is the absolute Not-other..."  What do
> you mean by Not-other?

Again, this comes from Cusa's theory.  The absolute principle (Essence) is
the not-other; so that everything in the created world is not-other than
Essence.  (And that includes the nothingness negated by Essence to create
the self.)

Still a mystery?  You bet.  But what a grand metaphysical scheme!

Thanks for your input, SA.

Regards,
Ham